Inspite of being Monster of an online retailer, there is very little credible feedback/review material on Amazon from the perspective of buyers in India. I remember the first time I wanted to shop on Amazon I had a hard time finding webpages which did NOT say "Amazon doesnt ship to India". Well, this isnt true ! Not now at least ! Amazon does ship to India. And quite a few items too, not everything though.
2 cents are always in vogue on Amazon. Based on my limited experience of having shopped around 35k worth of goods (mostly lens adapters, compact flash cards, Books, etc) staggered over 5-6 orders, here are my ’2 paisa’ on Amazon (cant afford the cents I’m afraid) :-
Amazon not only sells for itself but also sells on behalf of a host of other retailers, (some small, some big names themselves). In addition they also sell used items on behalf of individual sellers (similar to ebay) except that the price is fixed and there is no auction. Although they have a long list of articles on offer, things like Books, CDs/DVDs, cameras, electronic items, etc are merchandise that they specialise
in. As mentioned earlier, some items are restricted and cant be shipped outside the US.
These Shipping Restrictions arent group specific. For instance, some softwares can be shipped to India, some cant; some watches can be shipped, some cant; some mobiles can be shipped, some cant. Why this should be so, I have no idea :-( It is best to check the product description which usually says "this item can only be shipped to US" or "this item can also be shipped to select countries outside US". In case you have selected an item which cant be shipped to India, you will be asked to remove it from your cart during checkout. You can also try buying the same item from another seller who may be able to ship it to India. All this gives me a feeling - "someone somewhere is made to rob you".
Amazon’s pricing isnt anywhere near rockbottom when you consider the international market. However, compared to Indian online retailers, (read flipkart, infibeam, etc, most of which seem to backsource their articles from international sellers including possibly Amazon), it can range from
marginally to highly competitive. eg., the ’maximum’ all inclusive cost of a 16GB Transcend Blue (400x) compact flash card is Rs.3500/- from Amazon (assuming you dont order anything else to scale down the shipping costs) while the same card sells for about Rs.4100 (without bill) in India. I got a new housing for my Blackberry for 600 bucks when retailers at Kolkata wouldnt budge below 1400 bucks
for the same thing. Amazon has a "Deals of the Day / Golden Box" promo whereby they offer steep discounts on many articles for a short period of time. A few days ago you could have bought the Sennheiser CX300 for around 2k ’maximum’ all inclusive while the same earphones are difficult to get for 3.5k from credible retailers India (excluding ebay India).
Shipping / Handling charges - The first article is charged $5 (Standard shipping) and subsequent additions 3-4$ apiece, assuming the weight increase isnt dramatic. Expedited shipping starts 15$. Its easy to see that shipping is a major cost and in order to justify purchases the order size needs to be at least 60-70$ to benefit vis-a-vis Indian prices of the ordered articles.
Import duty - The worst part of the shopping experience on Amazon is, they wont divulge the "full charges" for your cart-full until you reach the last page of "order confirmation". This can be dicey as not only is it a major inconvenience to browse through 3-4 pages just to know the "all inclusive cost" of buying a product but it also increases the risk of accidentally ordering something which you might not intend to buy. The "order confirmation" page will display interalia the "total cost of items", the total "Shipping/Handling Charges" and the "Import Fee Deposit", if applicable (it usually is !). The Import Fee Deposit is meant to be utilised in case the parcel/courier companies acting as your agent are required to pay Import Duty according to the laws of Destination country. Now again there is no guideline shared by Amazon as to how these "Import Fee Deposits" are calculated. They do mention that part of the deposit is refundable if it isnt utilised but they also pass the buck to the courier companies for retrieval of any info relating to the actual Import Duty levied. In my limited experience, I havent had a single instance of deposit being refunded ! Further, no breakup of the "Import Fee Deposit" is provided to enable you to calculate the Duty paid on a specific item. You’d do well to look up the duty applicable on items ordered by you elsewhere on the Net. Its normally ~14% for books and ~25% for most of other things. It can go upto more than 100% in some cases !!
Amazon usually ships products via i-parcel service. These guys have a tieup with Expressit in India for local delivery. The shipments can be easily tracked and whatsmore they have a local phone no. (in metros at least) which can be contacted in case of any problems. However articles shipped by other retailers often come via "US Postal Service (USPS)" which in turn has a tieup with ...you guessed it...Indian Postal Service (IPS)... The articles are traceable for the initial couple of days before they are
delivered to IPS... then ..... Need I say more ?? Bear in mind that for articles shipped by USPS, the import duty is paid by you at the time of taking delivery rather than upfront.
Shipments from Amazon are usually delivered on the 1st/2nd day of the delivery estimate span
provided. For shipments via USPS, the buyer needs to give proper allowances in line with IPS’s "reputation" which might include not only delays in delivery but manhandling and even damage. But pundits will tell you it always pays to stick to the Government. And there isnt any exception here. What you lose by way of delayed delivery, you more than gain by getting a breakup of Import Duty on "government paper" !!
The trick therefore is to (1) Club your order in batches to lower shipping costs (2) order from as few sellers as possible (3) order only from Amazon and avoid other sellers since most of them offer only "Expedited shipping" which increases the costs considerably (4) avoid USPS shipments, especially for fragile goods, since your product might get manhandled/ tampered/inordinately delayed and whats more you’ll be helpless (5) stick to USPS if you are suspicious of being charged higher import fee deposit.
There is another aspect that worries me. Amazon stores your card no./info and charges you everytime you buy. Typically I’m not comfortable with websites storing card info, not only for security reasons but also because they then have the power to charge you on any pretext. I would recommend deleting your card info/account, especially if you are shopping one time.
To wrap it up, I’ll say that Amazon comes as a great respite for Indians looking to purchase goods that arent easily available/heavily priced in India, without having to take favours from their relatives/friends returning from abroad. However it calls for a lot of "calculated shopping" and tons of self discipline (to avoid buying things that are cheap but you dont really need). Afterall -
Yun to ’Nask’ kya kuch nahin bikta hai iss jahan me
Fakat kis kis ka mol karoge, kya kya khareedoge